Books, Articles, and Presentations

I have written three books and many articles for online publications, as well as presenting at developer conferences. This is a sample of my work

HTML Canvas: A Travelogue

HTML Canvas: A Travelogue is an interactive guide to learning Canvas, the JavaScript graphics API in HTML 5. Bundled up as an affordable tablet app and itself written with web technologies, the book gives you a complete overview of Canvas and dives deep into a few key areas to give you an understanding of how Canvas works and where to learn more.

HTML Canvas: A Travelogue uses interactive teaching techniques that are not possible with a printed book,
such as draggable variables to see how output changes in real time.

Building Mobile Applications with Java, Using GWT and PhoneGap

for O'Reilly Media

Does what it says on the tin. Building Mobile Applications with Java, using GWT and PhoneGap gives you an introduction to GWT and PhoneGap, then shows how to combine them to build mobile applications. I cover not just the basic technologies, but also introduce 3rd party libs like GWT-MobileUI, a PhoneGap bridge, and Box2D for making video games with Canvas.

Building Mobile Apps with Java gives you just the essentials to get started and a few hands on projects. No fluff. I didn’t fill the second half of the book with reference material like so many other books that just want to pump up the page count. My goal from the beginning was to be short and effective. Get in, get out, get going.

Webcasts

Swing Hacks

I co-wrote Swing Hacks with Chris Adamson, also for O’Reilly. It shows you how to push the Swing GUI toolkit to the limit, with lots of cool tricks and effects. Amazingly, it is still a pretty relevant book even after eight years. Which shows just how much use desktop Java really has.